Challenge
Analysis of a Public Hospital’s maintenance spending found a significant portion of funds allocated to the upkeep of radiological assets.
The radiology department had little transparency or means of data collection for the utilisation for the major assets despite the high maintenance costs.
Discussions with radiology staff identified a number of anecdotal bottlenecks to patient flow across all modalities.
Solution
An investigation was undertaken to identify latent or spare capacity for each asset and provide recommendations to improve the utilisation.
Episode data from the Radiological Information System (RIS) was acquired for a 90 day period for the analysis.
For each asset and timeframe the average utilisation, defined as the percentage of time an asset is used compared to available calendar time, was calculated to establish a baseline.
Various analytical techniques were applied to determine areas of opportunity against the baseline, including utilisation per time slice during a working week.
Results
Identified realistic increases in utilisation could be achieved across 57% of assets
Attainment of the improvements detailed through an improvement road map, including improvements to patient movements and timing
Average patients per day increase of 15% across selected assets, improving annual revenue by $530K
